Ph.D. theses Udgivelsesår

A Legal Analysis of the Interface Between Public Procurement Law and State Aid Law

Petersen, Cecilie Fanøe(Frederiksberg, 2018)

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The Thesis investigates the interface between State aid law and public procurement law with an
emphasis on analysing when the award of public contracts by contracting authorities constitutes
State aid within the meaning of Article 107(1) TFEU. Article 107(1) TFEU prohibits any aid
granted by a Member State or through State resources in any form whatsoever which distorts or
threatens to distort competition by favouring certain undertakings or the production of certain
goods, in so far as it affects trade between Member States. Award of public contracts is
governed by procedural rules laid down in the public procurement Directives which lay out
specific rules and procedures for the award of public contracts. Furthermore, public contracts
can – under specific circumstances – be awarded directly without the conduct of a tender
procedure. These situations are referred to as legal direct award of contract. A contract can be
legally awarded without the conduct of a tender procedure, e.g. when the value of the contract is
below the thresholds set out in the Directives. Finally, situations might occur where the award of
a contract directly to an economic operator falls under the scope of the procurement Directives
and thus should have happened through a tender procedure. Such situations are referred to as
illegal direct award of contracts. This Thesis analyses the extent to which State aid rules apply in
the abovementioned situations.

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An Analysis of the Perception of and Reaction to Reviewers in Fine-Dining

Müller, Fabian Heinrich(Frederiksberg, 2018)

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Our society has seen a proliferation of valuation devices leading to the existence of
multiple devices that valuate the same product or service. Studies of valuation devices
have demonstrated wide-ranging implications for the objects they valuate as well as for the
context, in which they are embedded. However, what remains opaque is the
understanding of how these valuation devices themselves are valuated by actors in and
around the devices. Aiming to enrich this understanding, this thesis gives an answer to the
following research question: How are multiple valuation devices valuated by the actors in
and around the devices in one particular context, in this thesis the Copenhagen fine-dining
context and what are implications of this valuation?
Theoretically, this thesis mobilizes the notion of valuation devices and is built on two
theoretical pillars that originate out of economic sociology: valuation studies and studies of
devices. Through delving into their common roots and reviewing previous studies, this
thesis finds that both areas of research suggest the aspect of multiplicity and the aspect of
the valuation of valuation devices as aspects needing in-depth exploration. I aim to shed
light on these two theoretical gaps. In addition, the thesis elaborates on the effects of
valuation devices, centering on performativity and reactivity, introducing the former and
going deeper into the latter.

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Patient involvement has become a part of the political agenda in Danish healthcare. Patients are
to be involved not only in questions and decisions relating to their own treatment and care – to
involve patients in quality improvement has also become a political expectation of quality work
in Danish hospitals. During the last 25 years, patient involvement and quality improvement have
become connected in Danish healthcare policy. However, the ideal of involving patients in
quality improvement is described in very general terms and with only few specific expectations
of how it is to be carried out in practice, as I show in the thesis. In the patient involvement
literature, the difficulties of getting patient involvement in quality improvement to have in an
impact on the planning and development of healthcare services is, for example, ascribed to
conceptual vagueness of patient involvement, differences in perspectives, values and
understandings between patients and healthcare professionals, or the lack of managerial attention
and prioritization.

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This dissertation explores how financial reporting enforcement differs in Europe and how these differences
influence the materiality assessment and disclosure decisions made by the preparers of the financial
statement. Furthermore, it analyses how financial reporting enforcement influences the auditors’ auditing
efforts, which are made in conjunction with the impact of the enforcement of auditors and limitations on
the auditors’ liability. However, research indicates that strict enforcement is a prerequisite for ensuring
compliance with accounting regulations (Hail and Leuz 2006, Daske et al. 2008, 2013, Ernstberger et al.
2012, Christensen et al. 2013, Leuz and Wysocki 2016). Nevertheless, enforcement remains at the
discretion of the individual member states, which has led to heterogeneous enforcement despite recent
attempts to strengthen and harmonise it (Hirtz et al. 2012, Christensen et al. 2013, Brown et al. 2014). This
heterogeneous enforcement has created a particular need to understand how enforcement influences
financial reporting if the primary users must be able to use it as a reliable source of information. This issue
is investigated in the following three papers that compose this dissertation.

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Despite being widely accepted and applied, maturity models in Information Systems
(IS) have been criticized for the lack of theoretical grounding, methodological rigor,
empirical validations, and ignorance of multiple and non-linear paths to maturity. This
PhD thesis focuses on addressing these criticisms by incorporating recent
developments in configuration theory, in particular application of set-theoretic
approaches. The aim is to show the potential of employing a set-theoretic approach for
maturity model research and empirically demonstrating equifinal paths to maturity.
Specifically, this thesis employs Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) to identify
maturity stage boundaries as necessary conditions and Qualitative Comparative
Analysis (QCA) to arrive at multiple configurations that can be equally effective in
progressing to higher maturity. Furthermore, this thesis prescribes methodological
guidelines consisting of detailed procedures to systematically apply set theoretic
approaches for maturity model research and provides demonstrations of it application
on three datasets.
The thesis is a collection of six research papers that are written in a sequential manner.
The first paper reviews literature on maturity models in IS, identifies research gaps and
proposes use of configurational theory to address these challenges. The second paper
conceptualizes stage boundaries as necessary conditions and demonstrates the
application of Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) on a social media maturity
dataset. Building on the second paper, the third paper conceptualises maturity stage
characteristics in terms of configurations using Qualitative Comparative Analysis
(QCA). Overall, the third demonstrates empirically the existence of multiple paths to
maturity and provides IS researchers with a six-step procedure and detailed guidelines
to systematically apply set theroretic approaches to maturity models (STAMM). The
fourth paper then uses the social media maturity dataset, computes maturity scores
using different quantitative methods prescribed in maturity models literature and
proposes recommendations for maturity model designers. The fifth and sixth papers are
demonstrations of applicability of STAMM on different datasets. The fifth replicates
and extends a prior research study on ITIL maturity and compares the findings with the
results using STAMM. Finally, the sixth paper argues for a multi-method approach by
combining STAMM and PLS-SEM in understanding the conditions associated with IT
service management (ITSM) maturity.
This PhD thesis contributes to the academic discussion on how maturity occurs
through configurations. The key contribution is STAMM, a set-theoretic procedure model and method, which employs FsQCA and NCA to empirically demonstrate
multiple paths to maturity (or equifinality). It also contributes to set-theoretic
approaches, in particular QCA and NCA. Finally, this thesis contributes to multimethod
approach by harmoniously integrating PLS-SEM, QCA and NCA, thus adding
to the limited body of multi-method literature.

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Money is a scarce resource for most people. For that reason, the decision whether to
spend more today and less in the future or vice versa is a recurrent question to many of us.
Pension systems provide incentives for saving for future consumption and mortgage markets
allow us to increase consumption immediately by giving up future spending opportunities
accordingly. For this reason, pension and mortgage systems play a key role to individual
savings decisions. This dissertation is comprised by three self-contained chapters concerned
with how individual savings behavior depends on the design of certain pension and mortgage
features.

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The thesis presents the essence of my study of how leaders transform their practice through
aesthetic performance. The background of the study is leaders' need for learning in and through
practice, as an alternative to learning in classrooms and to leadership education programs. The
study is based on theories of aesthetic performance and transformative learning, and on
empirical studies through interventive methods within action research and ethnography.
Transformative learning in my study has been developed based on aesthetic performance
addressing leaders’ learning in practice. This kind of learning happens when leaders become
aware of the potential for transformation of their leadership practice when they experiment with
aesthetic performance integrated in a learning process. The greatest impact in relation to
organisational transformation is, when leaders base their learning on a collective of leaders, which
seems to underpin leaders’ feeling of togetherness and encourage a shared understanding of the
prerequisites for changes in the organisational practice. Transformative learning takes place when
leaders sense what emerges and affect others in a way that lead to changes of their practice.
In three separate topics, my study firstly explores how aesthetic performance affects leadership
at a personal level, secondly enhances transformation of leaders’ practice in the daily
organisational context and thirdly helps leaders to handle dilemmas when an overall learning
design is combined with the aesthetic. In my study of leaders’ practice through the different
topics, one topic builds on another.

As digital technologies become prevalent and embedded in the
environment, "smart" everyday objects like smart phones and smart homes
have become part and parcel of the human enterprise. The ubiquity of
smart objects, that produce ever-growing streams of data, presents both
challenges and opportunities. In this dissertation, I argue that information
systems extending these data streams, referred to as "predictive
information systems with sensors", can generate added value and will be
gaining momentum in academia and in the industry. Subsequently, seeing
apparent complexity in designing IS artifacts with such functionality, I
introduce a framework for Designing Information Systems with Predictive
Analytics (DISPA), extending Design Science Research specifically towards
rigorous design of predictive analytics.
The framework is evaluated based on a case study of MAN Diesel and
Turbo, a lead designer of marine diesel engines generating multiple
applicable artifacts in the process. Additionally, the framework
exemplification in the case context led to supplementing the framework
with a set of Design Principles for Designing Predictive Information
Systems as well as a matrix for pre-assessing financial feasibility of
predictive information systems with sensor technologies.
This work provides a contribution to information systems research, and in
particular to design science research, by introducing a model for Designing
Information Systems with Predictive Analytics (DISPA) that can serve as a
method for developing IS artifacts. The framework constitutes an
Information System Design Theory consistent with the established
definitions from the literature (Gregor & Jones, 2007; Kuechler & Vaishnavi,
2012; Walls, Widmeyer, & El Sawy, 1992). In addition, the paper introduces
and systematically evaluates a number of spare-part forecasting methods,
which can be considered a contribution to operations research literature.

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The aim of the dissertation is to disentangle complexities of social capital in boards of
directors through proposing new theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches.
Although extant previous research has discussed various aspects of social capital and its
association with numerous organizational outcomes, still the literature demonstrates evident
shortcomings resulting from overlooking and oversimplifying its complexities. Therefore, to fill
gaps in the literature, the dissertation addresses the following research question: in the context of
boards of directors, how can social capital be better understood through exploration of its
complexities?
The dissertation comprises three empirical studies that individually address the identified
gaps in the literature and combined address the aforementioned research question. In this way,
the dissertation demonstrates that social capital in boards of directors is more complex than it
has been assumed in previous studies and its understanding requires a novel approach to
conceptualization and empirical research. The first chapter explains the topic and motivation for
the dissertation. The following chapter (Chapter 2) synthetizes the previous approaches to
investigating board social capital and proposes a new theoretical and methodological approach.
It particularly asserts that research on board social capital may be advanced through utilizing
configurational perspective and method, what is then shown on an example of the relationship
between board social capital and firm performance. Chapter 3 explores social capital of board
chair, which has been overlooked in previous studies. It suggests that individual social capital of
board chair is as important for organizational performance as social capital of CEO and
directors. Therefore, performance effect derives from combined social capital of board chair,
CEO, and directors. Further, the dissertation discusses dynamics of board social capital (Chapter
4) in the context of firm expansion. It emphasizes that evolution process of board social capital
is driven by multidimensional changes occurring within internal and external networks of social
relationships created by board members. Evolution paths are consequently proposed for
diversity and strength of external network ties, and for internal network cohesion. In light of the
overarching research question, the final chapter summarizes the findings.

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Do entrepreneurs differ from others with regard to their behavioral traits, and can beliefs
held by employers about these differences lead to self-employedworkers being stigmatized
in the labor market? Although central to the study of entrepreneurship, the literature does
not provide a clear answer to these questions. This can partly be due to the inherent difficulty
in answering them by resorting to observational studies. People can select into entrepreneurship
because of their preferences for the non-pecuniary benefits of the occupation,
but also because of opportunities that (only) they perceive. Based on the premise that
reliance on multiple methodological approaches can contribute to the credibility of empirical
results, this thesis explores the above questions by resorting to experimental techniques.
It first tests the hypothesis of whether entrepreneurs are more action-oriented than other
occupational groups. Analyzing the playing strategies of 100s of entrepreneurs, managers
and employees in an optimal stopping game suggests that entrepreneurs are indeed more
action-oriented than others. It is theorized that this is driven by their lower levels of loss
aversion and higher levels of curiosity. The empirical test results showthat (i) entrepreneurs
score indeed higher, on average, than managers and employees on curiosity and lower on
loss aversion; (ii) the difference in action-orientedness between entrepreneurs and others
vanishes when controlling for individual curiosity levels and (iii) an alternative treatment
that provides subjects with counterfactual information (about what would have happened
in case of continuing) increases their willingness to stop. Under some assumptions, the
combination of these results leads to the conclusion that the higher action-orientedness of
entrepreneurs can be linked to their greater curiosity, but not to their lower level of loss aversion.
These findings support the intuitive idea that (curiosity driven) action-orientedness
enhances the identification and/or exploitation of opportunities.

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This study examines rapid prototyping, also referred to as new production launch, or ramp-up
time. A strong emphasis on speed is vital for the success of a product development and market launch.
Managers concern themselves with organizing ramp-up activities into arrayed sequences to achieve
production launch goals. These sequences are not only regarding prearranged linear milestones, but
extensively reviewed and often reorganized complex activities, with the managerial goal of a wellconfigured
productive process.
The need to manage the final phase in product development is evident, because many of the
failures leading to product launch delays have multiple root causes, ranging from poorly understood
and overly engineered novel technologies to a “throw it over the wall” approach between
development functions and inexperienced machine operators, in addition to high complexity levels
in quality testing. The study examines these complexities through social theoretical lenses. In doing
so, an in-depth qualitative approach has been employed with the aim of addressing the fundamental
barriers in the advancement of this managerial field, and the practical complexities in managing this
specific part of the development of products. This has been achieved by longitudinally studying a
total of eight major development cases at a large Scandinavian manufacturing company over a period
of three years. These development projects faced different challenges during the interface between
R&D and ramp-up production, resulting in delays in product launch. Drawing on the results of this
real-time study, the thesis contributes with (i) a conceptual model for lean management application
to the ramp-up process, (ii) the advancement of clinical methodological approach for in-depth
studying of the ramp-up management phenomena, (iii) cause and effects of ramp-up activities delays,
and (iv) managerial strategies for managing organization-environment interdependencies.

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This PhD reflects the effort to close a gap in the multinational enterprise (MNE) risk
management literature on the identification and mitigation of risk arising from local
communities. Small villages and towns that are situated geographically close to the MNEs’
place of operation have increasingly been identified as a source of risk (BSR, 2003; ICMM,
2015). The mining industry is one of the most exposed to risks from local communities, where
there historically have been many conflicts between mine owners on one side and the people
living close to the mine on the other (Godoy, 1985; Hoskin, 1912; Lynch, 2002; Morris, et al.,
2012). And with access to new communication technologies, it is possible for even the remotest
communities to communicate effectively to a wide global audience, enabling non-governmental
organisations, politicians, investors and other civil society actors access to up-to-date
information about mining MNE operations. This improved outreach has meant that mines have
been closed due to conflicts with local communities and therefor a need had arisen for MNEs to
implement management practices that can effectively mitigate these types of risks.

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Retail stores are designed to attract and inspire consumers. They also function as communication
platforms between brand and consumer. Customers, both consciously and unconsciously, decode
messages embedded in the store design, and use them in their decision-making. But how can
design managers know with any certainty whether the choices they make actually add value, to
the products in the store? This dilemma has been addressed from varying perspectives in businessrelated
design and marketing literature. John Heskett (2005) acknowledges the conflict of
imperatives that obtains between a company and the users of its products and ascribes to design
the role of providing a bridge between them. Philip Kotler (1973) underscores the need for
designers to understand the targeted consumers by making a distinction between intended and
perceived atmosphere. The intended atmosphere is, of course, the set of sensory qualities that the
designer of an environment means to invoke. But a design is not always perceived as intended;
indeed, perception can vary significantly from one customer to the next. Apart from offering
insights in the retail designer’s process of creating stores that function as a marketing tool, this
dissertation proposes a method for measuring whether decisions made by the store designer do
indeed support the products from the targeted consumer’s perspective. In four articles, a toolbox
is provided, offering insights of four types: (1) the theoretical and empirical, aimed at developing
an understanding of the different categories within the retail designer's working process; (2) a
codification of the stakeholders and constraint generators affecting the retail design process; (3)
the proposal of a new method for studying spillover effects from store interior to product; and (4)
the testing of this method in two field experiments, where we measure the effects of retail design
on those for whom the design is ultimately intended: consumers.

This doctoral dissertation investigates idiosyncratic behaviors of family firms and contributes
to an understanding of how family ownership affects the ways in which firms internationalize.
While each chapter in the dissertation is a stand-alone work intended for publication, every
study relates to an overarching research question about how non-financial dimensions of family
firm ownership—exemplified by socioemotional wealth (SEW) and familiness—influence
family firm internationalization. The dissertation contributes to varying literatures including
family business, corporate governance, strategic management, and international
business. Specifically, the review paper on family firm internationalization offers a novel
presentation of entry modes along the FIBER dimensions of SEW. It proposes a framework to
unbundle family firm-specific capabilities and motivations for internationalization for
subsequent analysis utilizing the theoretical perspectives of SEW and familiness. The next
chapter studies how family firm risk preferences affect behavior when engaging in cross-border
acquisitions. While most studies on family firms implicitly assume businesses are run at the
will of a controlling family, this paper abandons this assumption and examines whether (and
how) non-family shareholders interact with family shareholders when deciding to
internationalize. Results indicate international acquisitions will be of greater value when the
level of family ownership is high or low, whereas the value of an acquisition is lower when
family ownership is relatively balanced vis à vis non-family ownership. The final empirical
chapter studies family firm behavior differently by exploring the notion of familiness within
the context of an international acquisition. This study applies an action research methodology
first to investigate how employees understand the notion of familiness and then to observe how
this perception is actively mobilized to facilitate post acquisition integration. The paper
emphasizes how aspects of familiness can be purposefully mobilized to facilitate integration,
thus contributing to an understanding of familiness in general, and specifically familiness in a
context of internationalization. From a methodological perspective, the paper contributes rich
data showing how action research can be used in a business setting, presenting a process that
facilitates integration between two distinct organizational and national cultures and between
family and nonfamily firms as they face challenges in a post-merger or post-acquisition
context.

The study of counterfeiting and falsification of medicinal products, from a legal
perspective, is a relatively new area in the EU. Specific regulations that focus on
falsification of medicines came as recently as 2011. Therefore, this discipline is
also new for research.
There are two primary objectives of the thesis. The first is to analyse how EU law
addresses counterfeiting and falsification of medicinal products, (Directive
2011/62/EU, Directive 2004/48/EC, and Regulation 608/2013) – de lege lata. The
second is to analyse whether the law containing tools to combat counterfeiting and
falsification of medicinal products meets the social objectives of public health
(Articles 9 and 168) and consumer protection (Articles 12 and 169), as envisaged
by the Treaty on the Function of the European Union.
The thesis establishes that the problem of counterfeiting and falsification of
medicinal products lies at the intersection of three spheres of law - IP law,
Medicine law, and Criminal law. This insight provides the foundation for the
understanding of the weaknesses in the legal regime that contains tools for
combatting counterfeiting and falsification of medicines in the EU.

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Human capital – the stock of knowledge and abilities possessed by employees – is consistently touted as an
integral part of firm survival and success in dynamic environments. Managers must regularly decide how to
allocate employees among competing tasks and projects to optimize the utilization of available knowledge,
as well as select and implement the required structural mechanisms to support employees as they combine
their knowledge to address complex problems on behalf of the firm. The principal motivation of this thesis is
to explore how the effectiveness of particular aspects of organizational design in fostering the integration and
use of human capital is bounded by individual cognitive limitations that may lead employees to deviate from
expected behavior, both individually and in collaboration.
The thesis consists of three research papers relying on comprehensive longitudinal project data from a
global manufacturing company to investigate the integration of human capital and attendant consequences
for firm performance. The first paper measures cognitive load as an outcome of managerial choices on
employee allocation, and examines how cognitive load impacts employee choices on the distribution of
working time among competing requirements. The second paper builds on these insights to explore how
individuals adapt their information processing behavior in team settings based on cognitive load and the
observed behavior of other team members, as well as how these adaptive processes and differences in
cognitive load aggregate to impact team performance. The third paper investigates geographical and
psychological distance between interdependent employees as important organizational design parameters
that determine employee behavior and information use, both separately and in conjunction with one another.
The overarching contribution of the thesis is to demonstrate, through the combination of psychological
and organizational theory, how the ability of firms to properly activate and apply the knowledge held by their
employees is fundamentally contingent on the interplay of cognitive limitations and managerial choices on
organizational design. Common to the findings in this thesis is their immediate applicability in managerial
and organizational settings as recommendations on how to allocate employees between competing uses. In
sum, therefore, the thesis sketches the contours of a behavioral theory of human capital integration.

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Essays on China’s Political Organization and Political Economic Institutions

Grünberg, Nis(Frederiksberg, 2018)

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The present dissertation is a compilation of three individual papers, and an
introduction chapter. While the introduction lays out the theoretic backdrop of
the project as a whole, the papers represent interventions into three specific
dimensions of China’s Party-state order: structural organizational issues,
decision-making institutions, and political economic dynamics. These three
dimensions are presented as aspects of the same political organizational order, a
Party-state order assembled around the hegemony of the Communist Party of
China’s (CPC), conceptualized in the introduction using a Gramsci-inspired
theory of the state. Employing a historical institutional approach, the three
papers engage with specific strands of literatures of China Studies in a
conceptual and theoretic manner, while also contributing with empirical
findings. They discuss the concept of Fragmented Authoritarianism (FA), the
organization and institutionalization of Leading Small Groups, and the social
embeddedness of state-owned enterprise (SOE). FA has been an influential
concept to explain structural issues of China’s bureaucracy, and with China’s
energy administration as example, I review its value as a theoretic notion today,
30 years after its inception. Discussing the growing importance of Leading Small
Groups, the second paper addresses some of the institutional “fixes” to decisionmaking
and policy coordination, which have evolved in response to structural
fault-lines described in the FA paper. The third paper takes the dissertation into
the political economic dimension of the Party-state order, providing a case study
of how China National Petroleum Corporation, a central, state-owned and CPC
led SOE, is organizationally rooted in its local operations, remaining
institutionally embedded in local society through its legacy as a socialist work
unit (danwei). Using Polanyi’s concept of embeddedness, the paper reveals how
SOEs are split into two tiers each tasked with the respective objectives of
economic development and political stability, and thus as Party-state
organizations are used to flexibly support CPC hegemony.

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An Investigation of the Relationship Between Entrepreneurial Experience and Entrepreneurial Outcome

Toft-Kehler, Rasmus Vendler(Frederiksberg, 2018)

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Entrepreneurs and investors alike rely on prior entrepreneurial experience and talent as vital clues
for anticipating entrepreneurial performance. However, the extent to which entrepreneurial
expertise accumulates and the extent to which entrepreneurial talent can be defined and measured
remain open for debate. Therefore, the studies of this dissertation have been conducted with the
aim of advancing our understanding of how entrepreneurial experience and entrepreneurial talent
relate to entrepreneurial performance and behavior. Each study offers insights into how
entrepreneurial expertise accumulates and is therefore of relevance to multiple stakeholders

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This thesis concerns the empirical relation between risk and return in equities. It studies
why the expected return on stocks as a whole varies over time and why there are predictable
cross-sectional di↵erences in the return on individual stocks. The thesis consists of three
chapters which can be read independently.
The first chapter addresses why the expected return on the market portfolio varies over
time. The market portfolio is a claim to all future cash flows earned by the firms in the
stock market. I study the expected return to these future cash flows individually. I find that
the expected return to the distant-future cash flows increases by more in bad times than
the expected return to near-future cash flows does. This new stylized fact is important for
understanding why the expected return on the market portfolio as a whole varies over time.
In addition, it has strong implications for which economic model that drives the return to
stocks. Indeed, I find that none of the canonical asset pricing models can explain this new
stylized fact while also explaining the previously documented facts about stock returns.
The second chapter, called Conditional Risk, studies how the expected return on individual
stocks is influenced by the fact that their riskiness varies over time. We introduce a
new ”conditional-risk factor”, which is a simple method for determining how much of the
expected return to individual stocks that can be explained by time variation in their market
risk, i.e. market betas. Using this new factor, we find that around 20% of the cross-sectional
variation in expected stock returns worldwide can be explained by such time variation in
market betas.
The third chapter studies why stocks with low market betas have high risk-adjusted
returns. To shed light on this low-risk e↵ect, we decompose all stocks’ market betas into their
volatility and their correlation with the market portfolio. We find that both stocks with lower
volatility and stocks with lower correlation have higher risk-adjusted returns. The last fact,
that stocks with low correlation have high risk-adjusted returns, is particularly important because it helps distinguish between competing theories of the low-risk e↵ect. Indeed,
the high risk-adjusted returns to low-correlation stocks are consistent with leverage based
theories of the low-risk e↵ect, but it is not immediately implied by competing behavioral
theories we consider in the paper.

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Pricing is the number one driver of profitability (Hinterhuber, 2004) and deserves greater attention
from practitioners and academics (Kienzler & Kowalkowski, 2017; LaPlaca, 1997; Liozu, 2015).
Research on pricing processes in business-to-business contexts is still underdeveloped (Leone,
Robinson, Bragge, & Somervuori, 2012; Rao & Kartono, 2009). In line with authors, such as
Homburg, Jensen, and Hahn (2012) and Liozu and Hinterhuber (2017), Carricano, Trinqueste and
Mondejar (2010) particularly stress that there is a “continued lack of research providing sufficient
detail to understand how companies organize for pricing” (p. 468). It is important to shed light on
the phenomenon of organizing in terms of pricing to better understand firms’ internal pricing
processes and how they arrive at prices, to eventually help firms to move towards smarter pricing
and potentially higher profitability (Carricano et al., 2010; Liozu, 2015).
Based on this foundation and motivation, this dissertation addresses the following research
question: how do firms organize for pricing? For this purpose, an organizing perspective is
applied. Rather than focusing on the static aspects of the pricing organization, it draws attention
to the process of organizing. Hence, it is a process lens that acknowledges dynamic ways of
understanding social phenomena in organizations (Langley & Tsoukas, 2010).